My Life After Now

17

Sixteen Going on Seventeen




Lucy Moore as I had always known her ceased to exist. Instead, I was Mercutio. Rehearsals were my only link to the living. On stage, I got to be someone else entirely. I didn’t have to be me anymore, and I craved that time away from myself. So I was able to keep my promise to Andre, and rehearsals continued to go well.

When I wasn’t at rehearsal, I played the guitar. When I was immersed in a song, the music escorted my pain away, if only temporarily.

And I don’t know where it came from, but something amazing happened—I started writing songs. I’d never written my own stuff before. Whenever I’d tried, the only thing that came out were other people’s songs long ago stenciled on my brain. I’d begun to think there was nothing original inside me at all. But suddenly, I was filling notebook upon notebook with melodies and lyrics.

It was Friday night and I was alone, of course. My little desk lamp with the purple shade cast its dull light over my room. Dad and Papa were out at an art show (having realized their little library book enchantment had worn off, they’d tried to get me to go with them, insisting it would do me good to get out of the house, but I’d just kept strumming my guitar absentmindedly and eventually they gave up and left me alone), and Lisa had left shortly after they had, though I didn’t bother asking her where she was going. I was sitting in my favorite spot on my floor, my back against the bedframe, guitar in my lap. I played for hours, the six strings combining with my voice, the sound so big the four walls of my bedroom couldn’t contain it—it spilled under the door and out the windows so that the only sound in the world was this music.

I was so lost in it, playing so intensely, that it was a long time before I noticed that my fingers had actually started to bleed.

The song cut off and I stared at my bloody hand. I probably should have run to the bathroom to clean and bandage them right away, but I was mesmerized, watching the little red beads pulse and ooze from my fingertips. The blood spilled from my fingers, pooled around my cuticles, stained my nails, collected slowly in my palms.

So this was what it looked like: my new blood. The thing that was keeping me alive and killing me at the same time. It looked normal enough. Red. Plasmic. Wet.

The gashes were deep, on all five of my right hand’s fingers. The blood dripped onto the wooden body of my guitar. I didn’t wipe it off. Instead, I started playing again. I didn’t care that I was making the open wounds even worse, and I didn’t care that blood was getting all over the strings.

I played and sang and wrote till I passed out, and woke up the next morning still fully dressed, hugging my bloody guitar, scabs forming on my fingers.

It was November 17th. My golden birthday. I was seventeen years old today.

It was a Saturday, so luckily I didn’t have to go to school and suffer through all the smiling faces wishing me a happy birthday. Today was the first of my limited reserve of birthdays left, and there was nothing “happy” about it.

I shuffled downstairs and found that my dads had woken up early to make me my traditional birthday breakfast. A giant stack of alternating pancakes and homemade waffles, covered in whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and chocolate sprinkles, with a big fat birthday candle stuck in the top. I’d assumed this year we’d be forgoing the annual calorie-fest in light of my recent withdrawal from life, but I guess it was going to take a lot more than a severe case of depression to make my dads cancel their only daughter’s birthday festivities.

“Happy birthday, Lucy!” they cheered as I entered the kitchen. They were wearing party hats and blowing into noise-makers.

I sank into a chair. “Coffee?” I said, cradling my head in my hands.

“Coming right up! Anything for the birthday girl!” Papa said.

“Where’s Lisa?” I mumbled.

“Still sleeping. The pregnancy’s really making her exhausted these days,” Dad said. “Should we wake her up? This is your first birthday with all of us under the same roof, you know.”

“And only seventeen years too late,” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s that, honey?”

“Nothing. No, don’t wake her.”

Papa placed my birthday feast along with my Rent mug filled with black coffee in front of me.

And then they sang. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

They waited for me to blow out the candle. “Make a wish, Lu!” they urged.

Suddenly, everything came to a grinding halt. Make a wish. As if it were that easy. As if I hadn’t been ceaselessly wishing since that day at the clinic. As if something as innocent as a childish birthday wish would right all my wrongs. As if the one thing I wanted wasn’t impossible.

Out of nowhere, I began to cry, the tears running down my cheeks at the exact same speed as the wax that was dripping down the still-lit candle.

Caught off guard, my dads immediately rushed to my side and put their arms around me.

“Lucy? What is it?” Dad asked anxiously.

It was everything. Becoming another year older, my brittle, scabbed fingers, the Rent mug, my dads’ smiling faces…it was all too much.

And then the physics of it all became suddenly clear: the only way to keep from sinking was to unburden myself of the weight.

“I have to tell you something,” I blurted out before I even knew what I was doing.

They pulled back and looked at each other. Dad sat on my left, Papa on my right, and they waited. I could only imagine what was going through their heads right now, but I knew that they weren’t expecting what I was about to say.

I finally knew what to wish for: Please don’t hate me, please don’t hate me, please don’t hate me, I thought.

And then I said it. “I have HIV.” It’s amazing how much weight three small words, five tiny syllables, can hold.

The only sound in the whole house was the crackling of the candle. I blew it out.